Focus Is on United's Slipstream

With the Premier League title race a done deal, teams trailing the leader vie for a spot in Europe.

By

Joshua Robinson

March 18, 2013 4:36 p.m. ET

Barring a monumental collapse, one that would almost require Manchester United to forget about half its remaining games, the Premier League trophy is heading back to Old Trafford. With a 1-0 victory over Reading on Saturday, the soon-to-be 20-time league champions extended the gap at the top of the table to 15 points over Manchester City—a lead no team has ever surrendered in the league's history.

So while United canters home over the final nine games of the season, out of European competition and with an FA Cup semifinal to play, the biggest remaining intrigue is slightly lower down the table.

A spot in next year's Champions League doesn't come with a trophy—despite Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger's insistence that it's almost as good—but the financial reward is just as significant. The average team playing in the Champions League in 2010-11, picked up more than €22 million ($28.4 million) just for making it to the group stage, according to Deloitte. The gap in prize money between two places in the Premier League, meanwhile, has been widelyreported in the neighborhood of £800,000 ($1.2 million).

At the moment, there are four teams in with a real shot at joining the Manchester clubs for that Champions League payday next season. Only two will actually get it.

Seven points separate the four teams from third to sixth: Chelsea, Tottenham, Arsenal, and Everton. And with nine games left for everyone but Tottenham (which only has eight to go) it's conceivable that any combination of them could claim those final Champions League spots.

So here are the four factors to that will make the difference.

Recent form: Maddening inconsistency at various points of the season is the reason these three sides are locked in a fight for Champions League spots rather than title contenders. So it came as no surprise when third place came back into play after Chelsea won just three of its last six. Still, a victory against West Ham at the weekend calmed things down at the ever-turbulent Stamford Bridge.

Since early 2013, Tottenham had been the Premier League's form team, going unbeaten for 12 games—undoubtedly a "positive spiral," as manager André Villas-Boas put it. Except the spiral unraveled in the past couple of weeks with successive defeats to Liverpool and Fulham. Instead of cutting Arsenal loose from the pack after its 2-1 victory three weeks ago, it let the Gunners right back into the conversation.

For all the pressure Arsenal piled on itself with its FA Cup exit, a depressing defeat against Bayern Munich in the Champions League Round of 16, and that loss to Tottenham, the club has answered positively. On Wednesday, it pulled off an encouraging, if ultimately futile, 2-0 victory away in Munich, and on Saturday, it sank Swansea 2-0 on the road. Now, it has won five of its past seven league games, but it will need to perform even better to haul itself into fourth.

"I think to win a big game on Wednesday night transformed the belief of the team a little bit," Wenger said Saturday.

The Schedule: Assessing the difficulty of a team's run-in can be tricky, since every opponent is playing for different stakes in late season. But based on the average current league position of Chelsea, Tottenham, and Arsenal's remaining opponents, Arsenal should have the easiest time. Despite games against Everton and United from the top six, Arsenal's remaining foes have an average league position of 12th.

The number for Tottenham's opponents is 10th, but that conceals a make-or-break string of consecutive games against Everton, Chelsea and Manchester City in April. Chelsea must also face Everton and has a trip to Old Trafford, bringing its average opponent up to ninth.

There is also the issue of fixture congestion. Spurs and Chelsea are still involved in the Europa League, which plays on Thursday nights and bumps Premier League fixtures to Sunday. Chelsea also has the small matter of an FA Cup semifinal against Manchester United.

The Outsiders: Until the weekend, Liverpool fans harbored ambitions of sneaking into the top four, or even into the Europa League spot in the fifth, with a strong finish to the season. Those hopes were hit by a loss to Southampton that left it nine points out of fourth.

But Liverpool's neighbors, Everton, aren't so far off. They recovered from back-to-back losses in the league to Manchester United (understandable) and Norwich City (completely mysterious) to beat Reading and, on Saturday, Manchester City. Everton is six points behind Spurs and seven behind Chelsea, but is probably the team that will have the biggest say in how things shake out: It must still play all three teams sitting directly in front of them.

Could Manchester City Keep Slipping? The defending champion has won just two of its past six league games and is suddenly looking over its shoulder again. For most of the season, it's had a six-point cushion. Now, it's down to four. That should be enough to get City over the line in second, but the champions have been less than convincing in recent weeks. Despite beating Chelsea, it has lost two of its past four, to Everton and Southampton.

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